Fujitsu unveils blockchain digital identity platform

Today Fujitsu Laboratories announced that it has developed a blockchain-based digital identity exchange technology. The project interrogates blockchain transactions and ratings associated with them to provide data on a person’s trust score.

The need is unquestionable. In a digital world, we regularly transact with people who are strangers, as do businesses. There is always some doubt about who the person is. How valid are their ratings? And will they perform their side of the bargain?

Fujitsu is trying to use the data stored in transactions to verify whether any ratings and reviews are valid or not. If there are high ratings but few transactions from the raters, then you will have far less confidence, and the trust score will be lower.

The Japanese technology company says its project is a Decentralized Identity (DID) solution. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean self-sovereign identity.

There are three aspects to the solution. Firstly it stores evaluations in the forms of ratings and reviews for transactions on an immutable distributed ledger. Secondly, the platform converts the transaction data into a graph of relationships between users to generate a trustworthiness score.

And finally, the system claims not to force users to provide unnecessary personal information by allowing partial disclosure of relevant data.

Fujitsu plans to roll out trials in the financial sector.

In the announcement, Fujitsu referenced issues with people falsifying work history and qualifications. The company is involved in another blockchain project with Sony to address this issue by assessing the Japanese language skills of foreign workers arriving in Japan. The company has also rolled out a blockchain coupon service for tourism in Japan.